I never thought formatted writing was equally important as the words being written. I didn’t realize how big of an influence on interpretation it can have on readers. From the color we choose to type in, to where we decide to place the heading can affect the readability for others. Thanks to Melanie Gagich I learned that multimodal text is a piece of communication that takes many forms. With the different forms of communication they provide greater emphasis and visual appeals to writing. Multimodal allows you to explore and take different approaches in your writing.
In Michael J. Klein and Kristi L. Shackelford’s article, they point out the importance of influence formatting has in writing. It’s interesting because it’s something I don’t really stop to think about when writing assignments. Most of the time professors give the specific font, size and paper format they require. However aftering reading Klein and Shackelford’s article, they pointed out how that brings a sense of consistency to the reading and makes it easier to comprehend, as well as find certain information, for example references.
After reading these articles I would have to agree with the statement that the way you use words and place text on a page influences the audience’s ability to comprehend information. The margins, typeface and spacing, title and headings, illustrations all play a role in how you tell the story of your writing. Depending on how you want it interpreted you take different approaches such as different fonts or even different text and line spacing.
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